USA - UK lost their heads in extreme populism. Now they are hurting!
covid-19 demands Global unity, infected millions, caused a lock-down of half the planet's population, so now we know saving humanity depends on eliminating destructive elements of nationalism and populism.
Want proof that Republicans want to suppress voters? Just ask Trump.
By Jennifer Rubin - Opinion writer covering politics and policy, foreign and domestic
March 31, 2020
In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Trump referenced proposals from Democrats in the coronavirus stimulus negotiations that would have vastly increased funding for absentee and vote-by-mail options. The final package included $400 million for the effort, which was far less than what Democrats had sought.
“The things they had in there were crazy,” Trump said. “They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”"
The interpretation by Trump interpreters will be that Trump figures voter fraud among Democrats is so rampant that mailing in votes will surely be all fraud.
No proof, as usual, as there have been voting by mails in many cases over the years in many states WITH NO PROFF OF VOTER FRAUD by mail in votes.
In fact voter fraud is so minimal it is an obvious red herring for the GOP to use as their voter suppression default argument.
This is the perfect conspiracy theory, as it has NEVER been proven by anyone at any time.
The truth is that if the United States were a true and just Democracy, the winner of elections would win by the popular vote, but there is NO proof it would always be a Democrat.
Coronavirus Is Forcing the GOP to (Tacitly) Admit Its Ideology Is Delusional
By Eric Levitz - 7 April 2020
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/coronavirus-trump-dhs-undocumented-workers-essential.html
"The modern conservative movement holds these truths to be self-evident:
1. Undocumented immigrants are a scourge of American society, a nefarious invading army that’s depriving native-born workers of precious jobs, filling our cities with crime, and leeching off our welfare programs.
2. Uncle Sam has grown badly bloated and could govern more effectively if a wide swath of federal agencies were gutted.
3. The market is (a largely) apolitical sphere ruled by the impartial dictates of an invisible hand. Thus the superrich do not owe their astronomical market incomes to any set of politically ordained laws or institutions; rather, they earn their gains in a fundamental, metaphysical sense, and the state must therefore meet a heavy burden before it can justify coercively redistributing the wealth that billionaires have rightly earned. By the same token, the working poor cannot blame their low pay on political powerlessness but the objectively low value of their contributions to society. Thus mandating a higher wage floor would only condemn workers with skills that are objectively worth only $7.25 an hour to permanent unemployment."
More.
"Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump made a halfway-convincing show of governing as though these claims had some correspondence with reality. "
Then the 2020 covid-19 pandemic made nationalism and populism out of touch with reality.
" . . . the pandemic has brought the tension between the verities of CPAC and exigencies of governance to such vertiginous heights Republicans have been forced to (tacitly, quietly) make three startling admissions:
1. Undocumented immigrants are among the most indispensable contributors to the American economy.
. . .
2. The administrative state needs to be reconstructed. [NOT deconstructed!]
. . .
3. The “free market” is a big government program.
"Markets, money, and corporations are all creations of the state. The distribution of income is not determined by an invisible hand’s objective appraisal of each worker and investor’s marginal utility but by the politically constructed laws and institutions that structure economic activity in a given society."
More.
"The GOP’s tacit confessions of ideological obsolescence have been hushed, limited, and inconsistent. A reflexive aversion to contravening the prerogatives of capital is still undermining the White House’s response to the pandemic and recession. The Trump administration has stubbornly honored the conservative principle that the federal government must never coerce private industry into manufacturing public goods unless those goods can be used to kill foreigners. Thus, while Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act hundreds of thousands of times to ensure the procurement of missiles and drones, he has hesitated to use that law to mitigate shortages of medical equipment."
